Marathon: Quasar Project
by Tepea
Summary: Based on good game by Bungie. Takes place 785 years before the original Marathon game. A genetically enhanced soldier roams a Jovian space-station, wishing to live a normal life, until events begin to become more exciting... and dangerous
1. Chapter 1: Shotgun or Rifle?

Marathon: The Quasar Program

_Welcome to hell. No, seriously. Imagine if you will a place where people are sent when they are deemed too crazy for the military. A place where they undergo torture unlike anything else seen on earth. A place where they are made into an army of disfigured creatures that have only one thought left in their deranged heads: kill all humans. They are the H'won, and they are on the prowl. The only thing that stands between them and humanity is one man: me. My name is Jupiter Scepter, the "Minotaur," and I am humanity's last hope, the final bastion against the tide of evil. And I need your, yes YOUR, help. I need you to do three things:_

_1.) Relax._

_2.) Forget all that you know about science and extra-terrestrial life._

_3.) Keep reading._

Chapter 1: Shotgun or Rifle?

I whistled softly as I walked down the winding dull, gray hallway. Anything to ward off the boredom of half my life. The half spent walking through countless rooms and hallways, searching for ammo, specially designed energy drinks that shut down the pain centers in my brain for various amounts of time, or something much, _much_ worse.

H'won. The deformed alien-slash-mental people who the Frankensteins of the world had experimented on and then "sent to a specially designed hospital to recover". Yeah, right.

I sighed to myself as I came to a four-way split in the hallway, turned right, and nearly kicked something when I saw it was another hallway.

Those failures where surreptitiously blasted into space on pre-programmed shuttles to a secret base orbiting Jupiter. This place was huge. I mean, it literally eclipsed the flippin' planet from view once every ten years or so.

That's where I am. _They_ called me Jupiter Scepter for that very reason. The ruler of this god-forsaken hell-hole, that's me. I was supposed to be the "Prototype" for an army of super-soldiers They called Lode-runners.

As such, they code-named me "The Minotaur," and that _is_ what I do. I run through tunnels and hallways, killing anything that comes into my sights.

In case you're wondering who this "They" is that I'm talking about, it's the same scientists that created the H'won. After failing to turn the crazies and Section-eight discharges of the world into an army, they tried it out on high school kids. So yeah, in human years I'm only about seventeen. But for some reason the scientists thought this seventeen-year-old was man enough to turn into a king of the largest man-made satellite ever, and hunt down a horde of crazed, bloodthirsty alien-zombies. Speaking of which, I just found some.

I found one of those one-way doors these maze designers loved so much. I could see and walk through it from my side, but those poor deformed saps on the other side had no idea I was about to snuff their pathetic lights out.

"Hmm..." I thought out loud. "What should I use to kill these guys, shotguns, or a rifle?"

Of course this drove the H'won on the other side of the wall completely nuts, trying to find where the voice was coming from. I counted three of them, three-eyed creatures with long skinny bodies and wicked staves that fired energy bolts from the end. The easy guys. After a minute of indecision, I pulled out my two shotguns. If you thought the H'won's energy staves were kick-ass, wait till you see my weapons. Here's a rundown for ya, 'cus I'm nice that way.

Two .44 Pistols with scopes, an Zeus-class matter fusion pistol (basically a taser that fired balls of electricity), two double-barreled handheld shotguns (my personal favorite), an assault rifle/grenade launcher combo, a pumped up and pimped out Tommy gun, a flame-thrower (complete with backpack unit), and, get this, a SSM (surface to surface missile) launcher.

How do I carry all this you ask? Well, good question. The answer is, I have no idea. Whenever I need a gun, I just picture it in my mind, and there it is. Neat, right?

Well, anyway, I easily dispatched that group of deformed human/aliens (I'll spare you the extremely gory details). Now, I bet you're wondering why I call these failed experiments aliens as well as humans.

As the facts stand, they are both and neither. Human scientists have been gathering alien technology and materials for hundreds of years now. But it's only in the past fifty that those... _humans_ have been able to reverse engineer it enough to work with it.

The H'won? The prototypes made from crossing humans with alien regeneration machines created by a race I know only as the P'for. They also make frequent visits to my abode, and they pay me well as a sword (or in this case, shotgun) for hire. They hate the H'won as much as I do. Which is a whole heck of a lot.

As I was thinking all of this, a sudden tremor came over the station, nearly knocking me over. A siren began to sound, making a constant _wheep-wheep-wheep _sound. That could mean only one thing: Durandal's hounds have come back.


	2. Chapter 2: The Hounds

To tell you the truth, I really have no clue who Durandal is. All I know is that every few months these creatures, much more powerful than the H'won, appear and start tearing the place apart. Normally it wouldn't bother me, 'cus I'm not especially fond of this place myself, but those guys always manage to find my little safe-house type area where my last shards of humanity sit. Thus, the name "hounds". The reason Durandal is in front of it was that they have 'Durandal' tattooed on their backs.

I really don't know much about my life beyond what I have learned from my meager personal belongings. I woke up with them in an airlock on this station three years ago, and those objects the only things I had with me. Well, them, the guns, and complete amnesia.

It's pretty sad, when you think about it. All I have left of my "normal" life is a guitar, a sketch-book, and a photo of Einstein.

Back to the matter at hand.

I moved quickly yet silently to the airlock, keeping my shotguns out and at the ready. These guys are tough, man, and I've had quite enough bad experiences with them to not be cautious.

As I rounded a corner, I saw them unloading into the central hallway leading out of the airlock. I counted six of them. They were the reptilian kind, the ones that looked similar to the H'won, but toting machine guns and grenade launchers. But that wasn't a trouble for me.

With a flick of my thoughts, I felt my shotguns disappear and felt the familiar weight of my SSM launcher on my shoulder. Aiming it carefully, I placed my hand on the trigger and stepped forward.

"Yo, ugly! Over here!" I yelled.

Yes! They fell for it! By yelling at them ,their killer instinct took over and they were now running down the hall towards me. Cooly I looked down the crosshairs at them one more time, and fired a single missile.

The front two had just enough time to move out of the way. The third one was not so lucky. The missile hit him squarely in the face, which probably hurt like hell. The resulting explosion killed the two hounds that had dodged the missile, and two behind him.

One, however, managed to avoid the explosion and quickly fired two grenades at me. Barely dodging them, I took cover behind a wall an quickly switched out my rocket launcher for my shotguns. Turning the corner I fired off two shots, the returned to my position behind the wall as several bullets whizzed by me.

_I've got to end this, _I thought to myself. Switching out my shotguns, I hefted my tommy gun and turned the corner one last time. The poor dude hardly had time to raise his gun.

Walking forward into the mass carnage, I flipped over the body of the alien I had just killed. Sure enough, the word "Durandal" flashed brightly in iridescent paint on his back. But then something on his belt caught my eye. It was an access chip. I quickly reached down and grabbed it, along with the purple energy drink he had with him.

The access chips, incase you're wondering, are worth their ten times their weight in gold on this station, for they allow me to cut deeper into the system's memory, retrieving files about everything from H'won production facilities to dossier files on any number of people. I have yet to find mine though.

That's when I heard it. What sounded like a cross between an orangutan and a komodo dragon. That, my dear friends, is how the H'won communicate.

Quickly I reloaded my tommy gun and gulped down the purple drink. Ugh. It tasted like liquified gym socks. Running to the hallway from where the sounds emanated, I quickly fired off a whole clip of ammo.

Not a good idea. Sure I had just killed the one dude, but now I was as helpless as I was out of ammo. I quickly put away the gun, leaving myself with just my fists. Or so it seemed. For then, just as I knew they would, two more H'won popped out and came at me, firing those staves like crazy. That's when I pulled out my concealed pistols and shot the first one right through his skull. Dropping the pistols, I grabbed the second one and wailed on him several times, taking savage pleasure at the red blood that was squirting out.

Wait, hold on. H'won have yellow blood. Oh well. As I pulled my fist back one last time, a call rang out.

"Wait!"

I looked down at the bloodied pulp that was this poor guy's face. "Did you just talk to me?"

"Yes," said the H'won, or whatever this guy was. "My name is Jensen. I work for the FBI. I was sent to infiltrate Tycho Industries, and I was caught."

For those of you who don't know (which should be all of you), Tycho Industries is the company that funds the H'won experiments.

"And this is supposed to help me how?"

The man pressed another access chip into my hands. "This chip will put you into direct contact with the president. You need to send him everything you know about Tycho, the H'won, yourself, and this station. By the time you send them the info, NASA will have triangulated your position and sent a shuttle to take you back to Earth. I have but one request"

I looked at this man, who not five minutes ago I was trying to kill, and who had single-handedly brought me the hope that I had been without for years. "Anything."

"I want you to kill me. Kill me before the P'for technology they put in me forces me to try and kill you. I want to die a human."

I smiled at him and pulled out one shotgun. "Thank you so much," I said.

"No," he said, looking straight at me. "Thank you."

And then I pulled the trigger.


End file.
